Game Day with Calvin

Lee Corso may understand play making and statistics, but he's got nothing on Calvin in the enthusiasm category. While this is really his third season of  the Michigan Football Experience it is only his first truly conscious one, and that makes it especially fun for us.  Over the past few weeks we've been preparing him for the game day phenomenon by talking about college, football, college football, and, of course, the maize and blue (there is no such color as yellow).  The Friday before the first game we went to the resale shop to pick out some clothing in those particular colors and on our way out the door Calvin gave a rousing cry of "Let's Go Blue!" that he kept up through the parking lot, and I knew we had done our job well.  In good weather we start our home game celebrations with a Friday evening picnic at the Michigan Marching Band rehearsal.  The Friday evening band rehearsals are a popular Ann Arbor event and this week we spread our blanket and picnic foods out on the ground between several other families with young children and settled in for a good show (Calvin, we mean, who kept pointing out and naming all   the instruments and repeatedly remarking "they're marching down the field with their instruments, mommy!").  Calvin's favorite part of home game weekends, though, is probably the Saturday morning tailgate, where food, playmates, and adoration are all abundant.  My family has been tailgating with the same group since before I was even born, and the kids that I grew up with now all have families of their own that take part – the next generation of  the Go Blue club.  And though we don't go to the games themselves, after some great tailgating we trek back through the crowds (Calvin imparting an emphatic "Go Blue" to all we pass) to take in the action on TV.  Football games are the only television Calvin is allowed to watch (really it's the only television WE watch), and he has yet to take any interest, but it's clear that he's listening when we hear him repeat phrases such as "overthrown pass" and "missing offense."  Hopefully in years to come he'll be learning different phrases, like "great recruiting" and "experienced team."

Making a big splash

Playing in the sprinkler in our own yard was really starting to be old hat, so today we opted for sprinkler play on a larger scale at the Independence Lake Splash Zone, where we joined our friends Julie and Tyler for some swim time and a picnic lunch.  I clearly remember visits to Independence lake when I was growing up, if not with classes or camps on a picnics, then in post driving license days with high school friends, but in all that time there was  never anything more attention grabbing than the occassional lighter fluid induced, several feet high, charcoal fire.  Now the park, in addition to its kid friendly beach and various picnic and grilling locations, has a rather large and adventurous new splash zone.  It's probably meant to appeal to the younger crowd, specifically the Calvin types who are not yet at swimming age and cannot fully enjoy the lake, but I know I really enjoyed running  through the bubbling fountains and misting sprayers myself.  Calvin had a grand time running in and out, exclaiming "wheeee" with every dousing dash, and, upon noticing the lake ("that water over there") also enjoyed dashing after fish and practicing his swimming stroke (with a supportive mommy hand, of course).  This is definitely an outing that we will have to repeat before the season end is upon us.

More Pictures in the August 2008 Album.

Gathering together

For those of you who have yet to discover the benefits of facebook, the free online community often referred to as the intellectuals' myspace, here's one possible side effect of joining that may not come to mind - a house full of people you haven't seen in nearly fifteen years.  At least, that was the result for us.  After having resisted any form of web networking for many years, we both finally joined the facebook world shortly after our trip to Iowa.  Our excuse at the time was photo sharing with other wedding guests, but in no time at all we found ourselves instantly connected to people we had been out of touch with for more years than we care to count or admit.  Then tonight, only a few months later, we hosted a real life reunion with some of my friends from high school.  In all, eleven former Pioneer High graduates, some with their spouses and some with their children, gathered at our home for grilled sausages and potluck styled side dishes and drinks.  If we were worried, as the first guests arrived shortly before four, about the strain that thirteen years of absence can put on young friendships, those fears had long since been put to rest when we saw the last out the door just before midnight.  The conversation came easily, the food disapeared quickly, the kids played together happily, and the laughter flowed freely, especially when we passed around the old yearbooks.  It was an absolutely wonderful evening of rebuilding old connections with more modern and up-to-date wiring.  Don't at all think of this as a plug for the facebook community, but if any of you decide you just might like to host your own small reunion sometime soon, look us up when you join.

To Iowa and back...

A wedding is such a beautiful thing - the combining of two lives, two worlds, two hearts.  And it's so obvious when two people are truly meant for each other and they are surrounded by a beautiful glow whenever they are together.  We were very blessed and honored to have taken part in just such a beautiful ceremony this past weekend in Iowa, and because it was not only Calvin's first wedding, but also his first road trip out of state, we took a couple of extra days to make it like a family vacation.  The trip went something like this:

Wednesday 4/9  7am (EST): wake up, finish packing and preparing the house for the pet sitter, leave, forget camera cord, come back, leave again.  2pm (CST):  arrive in Chicago, miraculously find nearly free parking (cheaper than Ann Arbor's) on museum campus, enter Shedd Aquarium, spend more time climbing the steps in the amphitheater than watching the dolphins (to be fair, the dolphins only jumped once), have more fun getting a snack than watching the otters (to be fair the otters were sleeping), fall in love with the beluga whales (how many times CAN one two year old repeat the word beluga?), finally get interested in the sea creatures as we are LEAVING the aquarium.  5pm:  Leave the museum campus to pick up uncle Curtis and get dinner, get lost, twice, three times, get uncle Curtis, miraculously find free parking near his office, walk to dinner, QUICKLY order margaritas, walk back to uncle Curtis's apartment.  9pm:  settle Calvin down for the night (in the closet) and enjoy a couple hours of Rock Band before hitting the hay.

Thursday 4/10  8am:  Walk to breakfast, then back to apartment, then to car.  10am:  miraculously find nearly free parking on the museum campus again (to be fair, this might have had something to do with the pouring rain and long walk, but we're not complaining), run to Field Museum, have more fun eating crackers than seeing dinosaur bones, have more fun watching people than seeing stuffed animals (well, who can blame him?  He's used to the zoo), have more fun seeing dinosaur pictures than dinosaur bones (hey, bones don't look like the dinosaurs he's used to).  1pm:  drop uncle Curtis off at work, get on I88 withOUT getting lost, spend an hour traveling only 20 miles and wishing we HAD gotten lost.  6pm:  Arrive in Cedar Rapids Iowa (still CST), check in at the hotel, change clothes, unite with other arriving guests, book it over to Rachel's family's house, get there just before tornado sirens go off, book it to Rachel's family's house's basement, QUICKLY serve margaritas to whole group (tornado and all we had a great, great, great time).  10pm:  Back to hotel for night, tornadoes having been kept at bay, possibly by the constant siren usage.

Friday 4/11   8am: Get free breakfast in hotel restaurant, go swimming in hotel pool.  11am:  Cortney goes shopping with the girls and get to manicures, Jon goes with the guys to get tuxes and ride the escalators in the mall several times.  3pm:  Calvin stays at the hotel with his grandparents while his parents go to rehearsal at the church.  6pm:  Calvin enjoys a riotous dinner at Applebees with his grandparents and uncle while his parents enjoy a really fun rehearsal dinner with the rest of the wedding party.  10pm:  Bed for Calvin, pool party for a handful of wedding guests who don't know when to quit (Cortney and Jon included).

Saturday 4/12   7am:  Get not so free breakfast in hotel restaurant with whole family.  9am:  Calvin and Jon go swimming, Cortney goes with bride and bridesmaids for mimosas and breakfast.  10am:  Calvin and Jon are likely still swimming, girls go for hair and makeup.  12pm:  Girls return to house with plenty of time to fix any damage that has been done (this is a whole other story in itself, and a funny one at that).  2pm:  Calvin is napping at the hotel with Grandpa, everyone else is at the church getting ready.  3pm:  STEVE AND RACHEL GET MARRIED, lots of happy tears are shed, lots of tissues meet their end.  4pm:  The wedding party drives to an outside location and spends an hour with the photographers and no coats in the 35 degree weather.  6pm:  Everyone convenes at the reception site (Calvin had already been there for some time enjoying his own appetizers), dinner is fabulous, the live band is amazing, Calvin seems to enjoy the drummer the most, and we all dance the night away (well, Calvin and his grandparents go home around 8pm).  12am:  Jon and Cortney arrive back at the hotel in time to join the after party at the bar there.

Sunday 4/13  7am:  Calvin drags us all out of bed and down for a not so free breakfast in the hotel restaurant.  9am:  Pack the car, check out of hotel.  10am:  Get to eat again at a brunch with the bride and groom and their families, enjoying one last chance to celebrate with the happy couple!  12pm:  Still waiting for the video we took to finish transferring to Steve's computer (the digital age? Got love it).  1pm:  Pull out of Cedar Rapids, stop at Herbert Hoover's Birthplace National Park (or something like that), where we add a stamp to our National Park Passport, and Calvin gets a Junior Ranger pin, and we enjoy the beautiful, though still chilly, weather.  2pm:  Pull out of Westbranch, head for Illinois, not knowing yet where we will spend the night.  5pm:  Find a Holiday Inn, go in to ask about rates, while waiting for service stumble upon a magazine with an ad for a neat looking lodge inside a cool looking state park, call lodge and find out they are having a special and are cheaper than the hotel, immediately ditch the Holiday Inn and head for Starved Rock Lodge.  6pm:  check in at the lodge, go for a quick hike (oh so beautiful and including a wild turkey sighting), eat in the lodge restaurant (really fantastic food).  9pm:  put Calvin to bed, visit the hot tub, then visit the lodge bar.

Monday 4/14  8am:  Enjoy a fabulous free breakfast in the lodge restaurant, pack up and check out, then hit the trails for some fantastic hiking, see gorges, canyons, waterfalls, the river, and moss (Calvin's favorite thing to find while out walking these days), all while doubling our picture count for the entire weekend.  12pm:  Realize we took the long trail instead of the short trail and are at least an hour behind schedule, get lunch in the dining room, then hit the road for home.  The rest is history. 

Find a plethora of pictures in our Iowa Trip album. 

Back to (anything but) routine

It has been a whirlwind two weeks, starting with good friends visiting, then visiting good friends, then Christmas, then family visiting from afar, then visiting family afar... basically we have not been on our routine for over 2 weeks now because we either weren't at home or we had guests at home with us.   Over the course of those two weeks Calvin went on two 2 hour and one 5 hour car trip (adding up to 18 hours of driving), napped in two different cars and four different houses, and spent the night in two houses other than his own (amounting to more nights away than at home), ate in six different restaurants, six different homes, and one car, and attended three different parties packed with strangers, and during all that time nobody lost any of their sleep or sanity.  In all actuality it would appear that Calvin was born to travel and party.

So what was the best part of the holidays?  Seeing friends and family that we see only once a year is always very special to us, and marked our season with a special joy.  And Christmas itself was truly magical this year with Calvin being such an active participant, ripping open packages and squealing with delight over every new gift (even the socks).  We spent the last week of the holiday season in Harbor Springs, our favorite vacation destination, and in addition to our usual enjoyments (such as visiting family, a Mackinaw City trip, local restaurants, and putt putt) we were treated to a week of nearly constantly falling snow (starting with the 10 inches that fell during a snow storm our first night there), giving us a vacation that was beautiful, serene, and oh so fun for a toddler who is learning to sled.  It was exactly what we needed for a strong end to our 2007-2008 holiday season.  Well, that and the fantastic football game we enjoyed from the edges of our seats in our snow encompassed lodgings (think Citrus Bowl goes to Michigan). 

Yes, it has been a magical two weeks, and we were ready to return to our routines today, if only that had happened, but is anything ever really that simple?  What started out as a normal day quickly became muddled by a dead car battery that threw everyone's day for a loop, and an odd evening of mishaps, which included Cortney absent-mindedly mistaking Calvin's soap bottle for lotion and having to start his bath all over again.  Fortunately, whether due to the recent weeks of escape or something in the air (perhaps the beauty of the recent 11 inch snowfall here at home), all three of us remained in good spirits in spite of the frustrating disruptions.  Maybe tomorrow will be more routine, but nobody's holding their breath.

Pictures from Christmas are in the Dec 22-28 album.

Pictures from New Years are in the Dec 29-Jan 4 album.